Travel Blog

Image Courtesy of Pacific Daily News

After spending some time at the beach today, I decided to take a break from sightseeing under the burning tropical sun to catch up on some much needed posts. I think my sun-burnt body will thank me for spending some time under a roof and out of harms way from all those UV rays. The amount of photos sitting on my hard drive waiting to be published on the blog is overwhelming and I’m going to try to get as much of them posted as I can today, but first here’s a current events story from Guam I came across while reading the paper today; something I think you’ll all enjoy (especially the male readers).

Well, after seven years of being on hiatus the Miss Guam Universe Pageant is returning to Guam this year. Fifteen of Guam’s most beautiful local ladies will start competing today for the title of Miss Guam. The winner of the Miss Guam Pageant will go on to compete in the Miss Universe Pageant and win a $5,000 cash prize, as well as some other perks. Go Miss Guam!

Tags: guam pageant, miss guam, miss guam pageant

The heated Democratic Presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has been big news on the island of Guam the past few days. The close race has made the island of Guam the center of attention in Washington today as Guam Democrats vote in its presidential caucuses – an event which usually went unnoticed. History was actually made in Guam this year when Barack Obama’s campaign opened a Guam office in the village of Hagatna in early April. No other presidential candidate has ever made this type of commitment in the history of Guam. In addition to this, the radio and television stations on Guam have been consistently playing advertisements from both candidates over the last couple days. A few days ago Barack Obama even called in to one of the local radio stations as a guest which surprised a lot of people on the island.

I think it’s great that I’m on the island while such historic events are taking place on Guam. From what I have experienced, it seems like the Obama campaign spent a lot more money to win support in Guam. Pretty much every advertising channel on the island was touched by the Obama campaign. Obama had advertisements consistently running all over television and radio, pamphlets inserted into Guam’s major newspaper, and Internet ads plastered all over the biggest news website for the island, www.guampdn.com. The only advertisements I experienced from the Clinton campaign were television ads, and the frequency of the ads were very minimal. I think this was due to the fact that it has been mentioned the Clinton campaign is strapped on cash. I’m really interested to see who will win the votes from Guam’s superdelegates.

I’m not trying to turn this travel blog into a political one, but I think it was important to mention because this is such big news on Guam right now. The fact that both candidates are paying so much attention to Guam to win over votes from Guam’s super delegates shows just how close the Democratic race is for President.

Tags: guam democrat, guam politics

At the beginning of every month I’ll be making a post about the income (or loss) generated from Traveling Project for the previous month, and then updating the totals on the “Project Income” page so readers who are interested in the project’s success can follow it. I’m sure there will be times when I’m out traveling, and the location won’t have any Internet access; if this is the case I’ll do my best to post the report as soon as I get online access. Now, on to the April 2008 report:

Total Income for April 2008: -$292.23

Due to this project being started in April, I expected it to produce a loss instead of income just like any other business venture does in the first few months or even years it is started. Most of the expenses came from advertising I purchased to promote Traveling Project, which I think will prove valuable in the future and be a great return on investment as the project continues to grow. Here’s the breakdown of income and expenses:

Total Income: $0.27
Google Adsense Income: $0.15
Private Ad Sales: $0.00
Affiliate Commissions: $0.00
Kontera: $0.12

Total Expenses: $292.50
Web Design Expense: $15.00
Advertising Expense: $152.50
Donations: $125.00

I expect the project to generate a loss for the next couple months as I continue to aggressively spend on advertising.

I had a chance to do some sightseeing in the village of Hagatna, and while at Fort Santa Agueda I took some great photos overlooking Hagatna. In the left image you can see the village of Hagatna, Chamorro Village, Paseo Stadium and park – all in the foreground in front of the water. The village of Hagatna is the main business district on the island and is the location of the majority of local business offices and government agencies on Guam. During the weekdays the village is extremely busy, but on the weekends it turns into a ghost town because everything is closed in the area. Chamorro Village, the group of buildings with red-colored rooftops in the right-center of the picture, really isn’t a village but a group of small buildings with local merchants selling Chamorro arts, crafts, clothing, and local food. It’s another great destination for tourists to visit while on Guam. It’s hard to see the actual baseball field at Paseo Stadium in the picture, but just behind Chamorro Village you can see the large baseball field lights that illuminate the field on the weekends when teams from Guam’s baseball league are playing a game.

The photo on the right shows the Hagatna Boat Basin where local fishermen and tour companies dock their boats when not in use. You can also see the entrance to the boat basin which is a popular surfing and bodyboarding spot for the locals. Just watch out for the boats entering and exiting the channel!

Tags: agana, agana boat basin, agana village, Guam, hagatna, hagatna boat basin, hagatna village, paseo, paseo stadium

My original plan was to travel over to the Philippines, but I’ve decided to change my plans and go island hopping around the Pacific Ocean first after seeing this advertisement in today’s newspaper on Guam:

Continental Airlines which is the main airlines around Micronesia and the Northern Mariana Islands is having some great specials for their 40th anniversary. A great travel package to Saipan which includes the airline ticket, hotel, and I think car rental for 2 days is only $222 USD, and to Rota it is only $234 USD. The advertisement also said longer stays are available and to call Continental for pricing, which I am going to do tomorrow. In addition, there are some other great deals to other islands on the website that are just to hard to pass up!

Being the economically sensible guy that I am, it would be a lost opportunity for me to just jump on a plane to Asia without exploring the thousands of small islands in the Pacific Ocean for such great deals! I think my readers would enjoy it also, since it is rare to see travel sites cover all these small, unknown Pacific Islands. So for the next month or two the small islands in the Pacific Ocean are going to be my home!

P.S. – I’m still doing some exploring on Guam and have loads of photos, videos, and experiences to share with you which I hope to have them posted on the site over the next few days before I take a flight to the other islands.

Tags: pacific islands, rota, saipan, travel

The topic of this post is going to be about Guam Latte Stones. I received an email from one of Traveling Project’s readers, named Jeffrey, for the “Ask TravelDude A Question” feature of this blog. Jeffrey, who wrote to me from Canada, saw the latte stone picture I posted in This Thread a few days ago, and wanted to know more about latte stones because he said the picture reminded him of the Maoi stone statues on Easter Island.

Latte Stones, although they look like some kind of monument, were stone pillars used to hold up ancient Chamorro houses. The latte stones are actually made up of two pieces; the top round piece or capstone is called “tasa” in Chamorro, and the longer bottom column is called “halagi”. These stone pillars can be found throughout the jungles of the island of Guam, and wherever you find them there was usually an ancient Chamorro village around the latte stone site. The local Chamorros respect the latte stone sites as part of their ancient culture, and it is important tourists visiting the latte stone sites also have respect while in the surrounding area. Archeologists who have examined the latte stone sites have found ancient Chamorro bones and burial sites, and the locals believe these sites are places where the ancient ancestral spirits of the Chamorro people, known as taotaomonas, are still present. Latte stones can also be found throughout the many islands in the Marianas, and they have become the signature of these islands.

A popular tourist attraction to see latte stones is at Senator Angel Santos Latte Stone Park which is located in the village of Hagatna. Eight latte stone pillars were moved to this park as a tourist attraction, and many tour companies now bring tour buses to the park. The pictures I took of the latte stones are actually from Senator Angel Santos Latte Stone Park.

Tags: Guam, latte stone

Over the last year the U.S. dollar (USD) has continued to decline when compared to other international currencies. While this may be a good thing for travelers in other countries who come to visit the United States, it’s not as good for U.S. travelers who want to visit other countries. A weak U.S. dollar means services and goods in other countries will cost us more after we exchange our United States dollar for the local currency of the country we are visiting.

Below I took a snapshot of the 5-year exchange rate for the U.S. dollar to both the Japanese yen and the Euro. You can see that in both exchange rates we get a lot less of the countries currency for exchanging one U.S. dollar. It’s not only with these two currencies either, it’s pretty much like this across the board.

As far as when the dollar will get stronger, I don’t see this happening for awhile with the current state of the United States economy. So what’s the point of this post? I guess there really wasn’t any except bringing to attention it’s not so great a time for U.S. citizens to be traveling abroad; but on the other hand, it’s a great time for international travelers to take a trip to the United States because the exchange rates are in their favor. (While looking at exchange rates online I just thought it would make an interesting post.)

Tags: currency, dollar, exchange rates, Money and Financial